Thoughts On Oregon's Hobo Tax And How It Affects Portland? (moving, money)

[urbanlife78]

Originally Posted by Raisinet

I've lived in many U.S states and traveled most of the others. I don't care about the five cents, even ten cents. My time is worth than dealing with trash. The stuff is garbage. If you have a recycle can, I'll proudly drop it in the right one. Otherwise, it's garbage.

Well here in Oregon, we do care about the bottle deposit. Though it won't be an issue for you much longer if you are moving in the next couple months.

[EasyBeezy]

When I was in college, we returned every single bottle we accumulated, as we were broke and could plow the proceeds into more beer. That was in rural Oregon and there was no homeless issue. I don't think I've bothered with it in years. My time is worth more than the amount I get back. I definitely dont like people rummaging through my trash and recycling.

We recently moved back to the area from Virginia where there is no bottle bill. There is zero issue with bottles and cans littering the roadways there. In fact, they make it easier to recycle them by giving everyone huge curbside bins that you can put everything into. I have the same huge bin here (In Milwaukie), but for some reason you're not supposed to put glass into it. So, I'm sorry to say, our glass goes in the garbage.

I think the bottle bills usefulness has been eclipsed by modern processes and causes disruption and indirect littering from homeless rooting through the trash wherever they go. If they increase it to .10, it will give the homeless addicts more drug/alcohol money. However, I have to say that not all bottle/can collectors are not nasty bums. Some are regular people and immigrants that are working hard to survive in a tough city for poor people. I would be worried about those types losing this source of income.

[SETabor]

You should have a small separate bin for your glass. The reason for the separation is to keep shards of glass away from people sorting recyclables.

[EasyBeezy]

I was not given a bin for my glass. I'll call and see about that. However, just so you know, single stream recycling is not sorted by hand. It's sorted by giant machines.

[SETabor]

But people still need to occasionally fix jams and such. Keeping glass out of the big stream is a good thing.

[oregonwoodsmoke]

I don't think that the bottle deposit was a landfill issue. It was a littering issue. To keep people from throwing their cans out the car window. It was passed before recycling became important. It was passed before anyone was worried about landfill space.

It provides a whole army of people to pick up and remove cans from the side of the road at no charge to the taxpayer.

Just a thought here. If everyone in Portland returned their bottles then there wouldn't be any in the trash cans and the bums would stop digging through the trash.

I try to donate mine to a local charity because I don't like using the bottle return center. It's clean but you are required to use their tiny carts and there are only four machines. So you take in some of your cans, put them through the machine and then have to go back to your car for more cans, you lose your machine and have to stand in line again. Not the best design.

However, I do it because Oregonians recycle and landfill space has become an important issue.

[CanuckInPortland]

Originally Posted by oregonwoodsmoke

Just a thought here. If everyone in Portland returned their bottles then there wouldn't be any in the trash cans and the bums would stop digging through the trash.

Most people just put them in the recycling bins on pickup day. Whether the bottle pickers get them or the recycling truck picks them up seems to just be a matter of when you put them out. Why do I need to drive to the store to recycle for under a $1 of return? It only really pays to return for a deposit if you've got a huge bulk of them. Usually most weeks I have like 10-15 cans and bottles max, that's like .50 to .75 cents.

Honestly at this point, it seems like the curbside recycling(paid for by our taxes) is successful enough without paying people to drive to Fred Meyers or Safeway. Most people on my street leave bottles and cans out for recycling in the correct bins which then is usually taken by our regular neighborhood bottle and can scavenger(who is actually a nice older lady for what it's worth) before the truck ever shows up. I guess it's just sort of a weird economic system though that people are reluctant to mess with. Though it seems like the instinct to properly recycle is already strong enough that people are going to do it anyhow.

[pdxMIKEpdx]

I spent the night at my sisters house in Woodstock.
It just happened to be trash night.

I couldn't sleep and sat on the front porch smoking and watching and listening to the night.
In the space of two hours, I saw no less than four people going through the recycling bins.
One was a guy just walking down the street with a big bag, but the other three were riding bikes with little trailers attached, and had LED headlamps attached to their baseball caps so they could see.
As I was fairly hidden, nobody noticed me, but I could observe them.
They were quiet, discreet, and except for an random dog barking, you would have never known they were there.

We used to have an older lady that would come by just as the trash was being put out by most people, and take the bottles and cans that were in cartons and hide them in the bushes and then she would come by later with a small cart and retrieve them.

I felt sorry for the latter three guys, as they were to late, but the first guy made out pretty good.
I figured that if that's what some people have to do to get by, more power to them.
You have to be pretty desperate to go out every night rummaging through peoples trash to get a few dollars.
It must be pretty a cut throat way to make any money.

But I realized that people should never ever put anything in their recycling like bills, receipts, anything with personal information on it, because it's just too easy for someone to take it and use that information nefariously.
I just wonder how many people came by and checked the bins that I didn't see.

I personally recycle the bottles, but anything metal gets crushed and put into a big barrel I have.
When that barrel gets full I take it to Davis recycling in Clackamas.
I know that this isn't feasible for everyone, but some times I make more money because of scrap aluminum prices than the 5 cent per can return.

[freemkt]

My preference, if I ever again get my own place to live (instead of with umpteen roommates) is to install my own home carbonation system and tell the beverage industry and the Oregon Beverage Recycling Cooperative to go to hell.

The OBRC used to boast on their website that they are serving business and the environment - they never claimed to serve consumers and they don't. I once lived in a neighborhood where OBRC opened one of those huge Bottle Drop return centers - thereby removing neighborhood supermarkets as return options - in a place inaccessible by transit!

[pdxMIKEpdx]

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